Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

by Adam M. Grant

This book is not about ambition. It’s about aspiration. As the philosopher Agnes Callard highlights, ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become. The question is not how much money you earn, how many fancy titles you land, or how many awards you accumulate. Those status symbols are poor proxies for progress. What counts is not how hard you work but how much you grow. And growth requires much more than a mindset—it begins with a set of skills that we normally overlook.

The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.

Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same.

Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.

If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.

Polyglots prove that it’s possible to master new languages well into adulthood. As soon as I came across Sara Maria and Benny online, I knew I had to get to the bottom of their methods, because they’re professional learners. I was surprised to discover that when they finally picked up their first foreign tongue, it wasn’t due to overcoming a cognitive block. It was because they cleared a motivational hurdle: they got comfortable being uncomfortable.

Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill—an especially important form of determination.

The lesson is not that everyone who hates writing should do it anyway. It’s that if we avoid the discomfort of learning techniques that don’t come easily to us, we limit our own growth. In the words of the great psychologist Ted Lasso, “If you’re comfortable, you’re doin’ it wrong.” That was the discovery that launched our polyglots into language learning.

You can’t become truly comfortable with a skill until you’ve practiced it enough to master it. But practicing it before you master it is uncomfortable, so you often avoid it. Accelerating learning requires a second form of courage: being brave enough to use your knowledge as you acquire it.

Absorptive capacity is the ability to recognize, value, assimilate, and apply new information. It hinges on two key habits. The first is how you acquire information: Do you react to what enters your field of vision, or are you proactive in seeking new knowledge, skills, and perspectives? The second is the goal you’re pursuing when you filter information: Do you focus on feeding your ego or fueling your growth?

Being polite is withholding feedback to make someone feel good today. Being kind is being candid about how they can get better tomorrow.

A critic sees your weaknesses and attacks your worst self. A cheerleader sees your strengths and celebrates your best self. A coach sees your potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.

Tolerating flaws isn’t just something novices need to do—it’s part of becoming an expert and continuing to gain mastery. The more you grow, the better you know which flaws are acceptable.

Extensive evidence shows that it’s having high personal standards, not pursuing perfection, that fuels growth.

Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger—it leaves you bruised. Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments.

Seeking validation is a bottomless pit: the craving for status is never satisfied. But if an external assessment serves as a tool for growth, it may be worth using.

Research demonstrates that people who are obsessed with their work put in longer hours yet fail to perform any better than their peers. They’re more likely to fall victim to both physical and emotional exhaustion.

Obsession leads us to see rest as taking a foot off the gas pedal. We don’t stop until we’ve pushed ourselves to the edge of exhaustion—it’s a price to pay for excellence. Under harmonious passion, it’s easier to recognize that rest is a supply of fuel. We take regular reprieves to maintain energy and avoid burnout.

What looks like a big breakthrough is usually the accumulation of small wins.

The best teams aren’t the ones with the best thinkers. They’re the teams that unearth and use the best thinking from everyone.

We get stuck following people who dominate the discussion instead of those who elevate it. It’s not just the loudest voices who rise to lead even if they aren’t qualified. The worst babblers are the ball hogs. In many cases, the people with the poorest prosocial skills and the biggest egos end up assuming the mantle—at a great cost to teams and organizations. In a meta-analysis, highly narcissistic people were more likely to rise into leadership roles, but they were less effective in those roles.[*] They made self-serving decisions and instilled a zero-sum view of success, provoking cutthroat behavior and undermining cohesion and collaboration.

With a team of sponges, the best leader is not the person who talks the most, but the one who listens best.

This is an example of a phenomenon known as the Peter Principle. It’s the idea that people at work tend to get promoted to their “level of incompetence”—they keep advancing based on their success in previous jobs until they get trapped in a new role that’s beyond their abilities. In this case, the best salespeople went on to become incompetent managers, and the best potential managers got stuck as mediocre salespeople.[*]

Impostor syndrome says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out.” Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.”

I now believe that impostor syndrome is a sign of hidden potential. It feels like other people are overestimating you, but it’s more likely that you’re underestimating yourself. They’ve recognized a capacity for growth that you can’t see yet. When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them. Many people dream of achieving goals. They measure their progress by the status they acquire and the accolades they collect. But the gains that count the most are the hardest to count. The most meaningful growth is not building our careers—it’s building our character. Success is more than reaching our goals—it’s living our values. There’s no higher value than aspiring to be better tomorrow than we are today. There’s no greater accomplishment than unleashing our hidden potential.